Dreamt up in the UK in the 1990s, Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have over the last two decades spread across public services in this country, and now increasingly around the world. As a way of paying for public infrastructure and services like hospitals, power stations or transport, their chief attraction to governments is that the cost of borrowing does not appear on the national balance sheet, meaning it doesn’t appear to increase the government’s debt.

Yet as an increasing body of evidence shows, this ‘buy now, pay later’ model has more often than not led to more expensive, less democratically accountable, and lower quality public services than those directly funded by governments. What’s more, the complicated legal and financial structures behind PPPs obscure a simple fact: they leave an enormous legacy of hidden public debts.

The UK has been the trailblazer for PPPs through the Private Finance Initiative, described by academics as a ‘huge financial disaster’ for our economy. Yet despite this, the UK government is today pushing developing countries towards this global debt iceberg.

Stop promoting rip-off finance for healthcare in the Global South

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) have been widely discredited in the UK, where they have saddled health services with enormous debts. Yet the UK government is promoting the scheme abroad. Please tell Jeremy Hunt to stop promoting rip-off health PPPs in the Global South

Finance Ministers of low income Francophone countries have called for a range of measures to ensure the costs of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are transparent. In a communique at the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in October, the Ministers said measures are needed to ensure PPPs do not bypass normal budget procedures, and accountability to […]

Reacting to John McDonnell’s announcement that the Labour party will bring existing PFI contracts back in-house, and that the Labour party will “End the UK government’s financial and advisory support for similar projects overseas” Sarah-Jayne Clifton, Director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: “We welcome the announcement by John McDonnell that Labour will not just […]

Liam Fox, Jeremy Hunt, Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have all criticised the costs of PFI schemes in the UK, yet their departments are all actively promoting similar schemes in healthcare to many impoverished countries The Foreign Office and Department for International Development are using aid money to fund British companies to promote PFI-like schemes […]